I'm reminded how a couple of years ago, we were told that a certain fellow from Michigan had ruined the newer Atlanta players because he went down there on vacation and "stole" their badge. Hmm, seems like the exact opposite actually happened. Atlanta has become one of the great centers of SWMs, with several players capable of winning any tournament. I wonder if an apology would not be appropriate

I'm reminded how a couple of years ago, we were told that a certain fellow from Michigan had ruined the newer Atlanta players because he went down there on vacation and "stole" their badge. Hmm, seems like the exact opposite actually happened. Atlanta has become one of the great centers of SWMs, with several players capable of winning any tournament. I wonder if an apology would not be appropriate

Oh, they definitely ruined us. If by "ruined" you mean that we learned that we can steal badges from other people, too.

I'll probably get a full writeup done sometime, but here's the short version: Jason's Lobot is good at Evading and my Han couldn't roll a 2 to kill his Juno, and eating a big lunch at a Chinese buffet before playing Graham is a bad, bad idea, because it means I forget how to play well and run my dudes at Darth Vader like lambs to the slaughter.

_________________"An elegant, easy-to-understand concept or mechanic that accomplishes 95% of what you want is much better than a clunky, obtuse mechanic that gets you 100%" - Rob Daviau

KY regionals was a blast! Had a lot of fun meeting everyone and playing. Congrats to Graham on the win. I got to face Graham in the last round, and totally shot myself in the foot. I need a rematch sometime Graham

I need to write down my games before my recollection gets even fuzzier...Highlights:

Handing Mira's head on a platter to Les early in game 1. Major brain-fart. (Edit: I am referring to my own Mira, killed by his)

Stephen's Rex (cool custom!) whiffing 3 straight shots on my Seer, and I think an evade on the 4th. Seer went on to dish out some good damage and later took out Panaka so Bastila could stop meditating and get her hands dirty fighting Anakin. Human BG rolls an 18 to finish him off, securing the win.

Definitely had some luck with rolls that helped make up for some of my mistakes. Couldn't manage a 3 point win all day, but considering how rusty I am I'm quite pleased with where I finished. Thank you Bastila.

Last edited by swinefeld on Mon Jun 06, 2011 8:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

KY regionals was a blast! Had a lot of fun meeting everyone and playing. Congrats to Graham on the win. I got to face Graham in the last round, and totally shot myself in the foot. I need a rematch sometime Graham

I had my worst tournament performance ever in Owensboro, but still had a great time. I didn't make any major mistakes, but my squad didn't match up well against my opposition. It seems Yoda on Kybuck isn't as dominant as earlier. Once again I got beaten by a player younger than me! (This means the game has a bright future ahead)

It was great seeing some of the players for a second time this year. My favorite part of the event was actually the lunch break at the Chinese buffet adjacent to the game store and chatting with the other players. I have to say, being able to attend three regionals this year was incredible!

After playing a super-high activation, ultracompetitive squad in Atlanta, I wanted to switch to something that would be more fun and less nerve-wracking to play. Ricky had done really well in Atlanta with his Lord Vader and scrubs squad, beating New Republic several times behind Pellaeon’s ysalamiri. I also liked the way that Pellaeon let you decide whether or not you wanted Ozzel on a game-to-game basis, similar to using Nute Gunray to bring in San Hill but even better because you could choose after learning what the map was and what reinforcements your opponent brought. Just Lord Vader and brutes seemed a bit light, though, and almost bound to lose if outactivated, so I replaced him, Gha Nachkt, and some of the swarm fodder with Vader Scourge and Arica. Arica obviously gives you a much-needed figure removal piece and Vader Scourge can singlehandedly rip apart melee-based squads, especially if they’re Jedi. Plus I figured that someone would play the lancer, so Scourge would make their life a little bit more difficult.

Pellaeon was used to swap between Grand Moff Tarkin and Ozzel if I either outactivated by a lot or if we were very close and it seemed as though the disadvantage of going one at a time were outweighed by the advantages of not having to sit and watch my opponent move ten pieces without opposition.

First game was against Matt, with a Rebel push squad featuring Luke, VAR, and Yoda of Dagobah. Unfortunately for him this was about the worst matchup he could have asked for. I brought in Ozzel to outactivate him by a large margin, as well as an anamin scout. First round I used the scout and swap to put 80 damage on VAR, then killed him on the next init. It never got closer than that, unfortunately. Easy win off of a bad matchup.

Second game was against Greg, playing straight-up Solo Charge. He brought in an R7 droid and a bodyguard, so I swapped Ozzel in. He set up in the lower corner on the outside of Ravaged Base and worked his way into the tiny room with two squares of gambit while I put my squad in the long corridor leading to said room. Second round everything was set up so that I could throw sabers at Mara Jade with opportunist, then shoot her with Arica, then lock the door shut if she didn’t die. However I managed to botch this pretty sequence completely and utterly by positioning Pellaeon so that he cancelled any of that from happening (Arica needed an FP for movement to get LOS). Instead I moved Vader into the room so that Mara Jade couldn’t assault him, which seemed like a good idea until Greg overrode the door closed and took Vader down to 30 health. Now Ozzel was working purely against me, and Vader only got in a few futile attacks before he died, and the rest of the squad soon followed. It was as ugly and one-sided a game as we have played in a while, largely because I used Pellaeon about as badly as a body could.

And then the third game was against Daniel, which was a bummer on general principle and because it meant having to face Rebels, specifically his Gencon squad with C-3P0 Ewok Deity in it. He brought in 10 mouse droids and took the outside of Ravaged Base, and I said to heck with Ozzel and kept Grand Moff Tarkin because there was no way I could match his activations no matter what I did. 2nd round things got interesting. Daniel opened the top door with some mouse droids, and I moved Tarkin so that he could see them. Then we played cat-and-mouse for a while, with me moving swap fodder into the main hallway while he overrode doors and positioned his disruptive figures (Madine and Threepio) to thwart me. I activated three pieces in two consecutive rounds to create an opportunity – the second round Lobot exposed himself (not like that!) to open the door between the inside and outside, I swapped Arica in to the area, and then ran outside and blaster barraged almost all of Daniel’s squad, with opportunist for those pieces that had moved. Daniel failed quite a few evade saves, so in addition to the mouse droids I put 40 damage on Leia, 20 on an ERC, 40 on Madine, and 20 on Han. Arica died one activation later, between Leia and her Han shot, but it was worth it. It became even more worth it when Han rolled a 1 when he shot at Lobot!

At this point Daniel was definitely out of sorts and trying to figure out what the heck to do. He advanced the full-health ERC, figuring that I had no way to kill him when I won initiative, so he would be able to shoot someone with cunning. Uh, Grand Moff Tarkin? I activated three, first a rodian brute who very fortunately hit the ERC to take him to 40, then Vader who killed him with the adjacent throw, then Lobot who slammed the door shut. Daniel stared at his hand as though it had betrayed him by making such a bad move. He followed it up by moving the other ERC into the same deathtrap, for reasons that neither one of us will ever understand, and lost him as well. Now I had two overrides to his none, which is not a good situation on Ravaged Base. I locked the lower two doors, so he levitated and ran Han through the top doors, incidentally taking an opp attack from a gran raider that took him down to 40 health (the raider was disrupted by Madine, but hit anyway). He used the Leia shot to kill Grand Moff Tarkin, since doing anything else would doom him to losing Han again when I won init. But that gran raider had ruined his plans, because I could just run 6 squares and adjacent throw to finish Han off the next round. Go scrubs! He threw Luke against Vader, hoping that they would at least kill each other so he could try to mop up the rest of my scrubs, but I cancelled his Leia shot by basing him with Salacious Crumb and prevented him from re-rolling anything with Pellaeon. Obnoxiously, another rodian brute attack hit Luke and brought him down to 60, so when I won initiative Vader finished him off. Daniel said it was the worst game he had played in a year, and it probably was. I’ll take a little credit, though, for using massive aggression and unusual pieces to do a bunch of weird things and push him towards making some of those bad decisions.

Next round was going to be the last of the Swiss, and I could get into the playoffs by winning against Bronson. Unfortunately the matchup was something that looked really ugly – Cad Bane, Arica, and Nyna Calixte. Almost a mirror match, but with a ton of disadvantages. Superstealth swap fodder and attackers could make my Arica almost worthless, so even though Tarkin had just won me a game I pulled him for Ozzel. I had to avoid letting Bronson get Cad Bane shots and blaster barrages at his leisure at the end of the round and then just jet away. We both had 17 pieces and played on his map, Smuggler’s Base, where I deferred and ended up on the outside, at the top. First two rounds were pure positioning, and ended with most of my squad chilling out in the top corridor in a nice, straight line. Almost… suspiciously… so. He won initiative and made me go first so that he could get the last action, which was of course Arica running into the tunnel to blast my entire squad into pieces.

Nope, says I, ysalamiri.

Pellaeon’s positioning was literally perfect; there was no square Arica could reach to barrage from, and even if Bronson had realized what Pellaeon was doing, Cad Bane couldn’t have drawn LOS (he used Thrawn early on, so I could position Pellaeon with confidence). He settled for shooting at Pellaeon, missing both. Next round he won initiative again and shot at Arica, hitting once and missing once, I think. In response I ran Ozzel right up to the door and pushed Pellaeon behind him. A couple of scrubs missed their attacks, so he used Cad Bane to gun both commanders down. He mentioned that he knew I was trying to bait him into killing Ozzel, but figured it was the right move anyway. Well, not this time. With Pellaeon dead I could barrage the big empty space on his side of the map and catch a big chunk of his squad, including Cad. Unfortunately Cad evaded both shots (if either hit, Vader could finish him off with one throw) but I killed a lot of his gran raiders and an R7 droid, giving me override advantage. Next I swapped Vader in and adjacent threw Cad, taking him down to 20. At this point Bronson had a huge brain fart – he thought Cad hadn’t gone. So he just spun Thrawn without swapping anyone, then tried to gun down Vader. Oof. Next round I won init for the first time all game and finished off Cad, and he just didn’t have enough offense left to kill Vader through his high defense and dark armor.

That win got me into the playoffs, which I had not expected at all after hearing the third round pairings. I got matched up against Jason Alvey, who was playing Rebels with the snowspeeder, old-school. We played on Ravaged Base and he took the outside; I kept Tarkin. First round I earned gambit, which convinced Jason that he needed to do so as well, so he moved the speeder into the main room. Next round I managed to swap Vader into that room and adjacent throw the speeder for 60 damage, driving it back to his side of the map, although he sniped Grand Moff Tarkin with Han in retaliation. With that the entirety of his squad was in the outside portion of the map, so I had to take the fight to him or risk getting picked apart by long-range speeder and Han shots. I advanced scrubs in three different directions (main room, main corridor, arms locker) to spread out his disruptive (Juno and Madine) and make him waste override. In the end he couldn’t stop all three advances and I swapped Arica to his side and barraged almost every piece he had (almost identical to the barrage against Daniel). His mice died, his ugnaughts died, Leia, Madine, Rieeken, and the ERC took a bunch of damage, and Han evaded everything. Arica got killed by the speeder and Leia, but it was definitely worth it. Next round Vader ran down the speeder and finished it off on initiative, taking three shots from Han overall, one of which fortunately missed. I swapped Vader to safety and advanced my scrubs, finishing off Madine and herding Jason’s weakened characters into the corner. My fodder missed a stupid number of attacks, including Pellaeon twice failing to gun down Rieeken (would would let me swap Vader in and throw Leia or Han to death without having to base them), but by then the game was almost over and Jason had no path to victory. Han and Leia were still standing, but so was Vader, albeit with just 20 health. I was happy enough to take the unlikely and very difficult timed win.

And of course the championship game would be against Greg, again. He had totally thumped me the first time, and brought in 10 mice to make the rematch even harder. He set up on the outside, near the bottom. I figured making it harder for him to get at me, since he would outactivate me by a lot, was a good thing, so I set up on the upper inside corner, as far away as possible. I kept Moff Tarkin – the man just wins games! Over the first two rounds Greg packed his guys into the tiny room with two squares of gambit, a tactic that had served him well all day. The hostilities started with me opening the door and moving Tarkin over to get a look. The thought of me activating three at once must have been unbearable, because Greg just gunned Tarkin down with Han. Mara shot Vader, annoying doing the maximum 40 damage behind my failed dark armor saves, and Vader threw sabers back, more annoyingly rolling a 1 and only hitting once. Greg built a phalanx of mouse droids around his little fortress and I surrounded Pellaeon with a whole bunch of scrubs so that he couldn’t assault Vader or Arica. Next round Greg made me go first and I just spun Pellaeon, which was probably the single best move of the game by making him immune to a levitated Han. Between the difficult terrain, having almost 30 pieces crammed into a tiny part of the map, and Pellaeon cancelling our Force powers, it was hard for either one of us to do much. By running a brute outside and swapping, I managed to get off a pretty decent blaster barrage, with opportunist, which was difficult as hell between having to avoid Han’s disruptive and Pellaeon’s ysalamiri. Arica killed Dodonna, a couple mouse droids, and put 20 on Mara (which was a big deal). Ganner had already done – maybe to levitate Han to shoot at Vader some, I don’t remember, so Greg ran Mara Jade outside and attacked Arica, taking her down to 40. Fortunately one of my brutes managed to roll high and kill a blocking mouse droid, so I ran Vader outside of the no-Force bubble and threw Mara to death.

Then the game got weirder – Han shot Vader to death on the won init, but Vader made an enormous dark armor roll to not die on the first shot, forcing Han to shoot him again instead of finishing off Arica as well. That let me fire another barrage, killing the rest of his mouse droids and rolling a crit against Ganner. At that point Ganner had eaten every single barrage shot and now the crit, so Pellaeon carefully sighted down the barrel and finished him off. Now the game was Anakin and Han versus the best of the rest, except Pellaeon made Anakin not very good. Thrawn drew a tricky line of sight and shot Anakin down to 40, Salacious Crumb used wall climber to get past Han and Anakin and kill Lobot (over two turns), and I poured my chumps into the area to base Han and Anakin and basically make it impossible to go anywhere. I won init and tried to finish off Anakin with Arica, but missed one shot and couldn’t reroll; Han fired back but also missed, despite combining fire with the still-alive Gha Nachkt. In the process of getting open for the shot he also took critical hits from Salacious (!!) and a gran, so his squad was in trouble all around. At that point time ended, and with my six rounds of gambit to his two what looked like something between a very close game and a victory-in-progress for him turned into a fairly comfortable timed win for me.

This game was ugly. Both of us tried to make illegal moves with regards to Pellaeon’s ysalamiri (especially Greg), while my favorite error was including illegal targets in blaster barrages. We forced Gray and Daniel to correct us at least once per round. It had been an early start and a long day for both of us; exhaustion was setting in. Most of the play was in an area filled with walls, difficult terrain, and almost all of our squads, turning it into a messy slugfest. It wasn’t one to remember for the ages. Greg was extremely unhappy to lose to a squad that was, well, less than deadly serious, and especially as a result of playing himself into a corner, literally and figuratively. Pellaeon, after completely jacking me up in our first game, unquestionably won the second by limiting Mara Jade’s damage and preventing Anakin’s Unleash. Without the ysalamiri at the end Greg would have won easily, no matter what I did; with it, I managed to hang on for the victory. And Salacious Crumb! The little bugger ran past three attackers with wall climber and attacked Lobot in consecutive rounds to kill his fragile ass, dispatched an ugnaught that had the temerity to run past him, and lit up Han for twenty damage on a critical AOO. Not bad for a matchup with no CE’s to distract!

Thanks to everyone who came out, especially Les and Dennis who travelled the second-furthest distance, Gray for judging, and Daniel for spectacularly botching one decision after another to let me scrape out a win on the road to the playoffs. Condolences to Greg, who stormed through Swiss and the semifinals without losing a game, letting an opponent take him to more than 40 minutes, or practically breaking a sweat, only to lose because Pellaeon shuts down the good part of his squad. Next time I imagine he will ignore Grand Moff Tarkin and sell out to gun down Pellaeon instead. He also managed to get a speeding ticket on the way home, during the only time he has ever driven on any of our road trips. It was just one of those days, I guess. Oh, and props to Big Bang Games, formerly Coolector’s Mall, for being pretty much the coolest and most varied gaming store I have ever seen, even though I missed the rancor, X-wing, Hulk, and all the other incredible decorations.

Alright, so I played my squad from GenCon (Smug Commandos), except I dropped 3 of the 4 mice in the base squad for C-3P0, Ewok Diety. I did this at first just to have a little bit of fun, but after playing with it for a little bit I'm convinced it's a legitimate improvement to the squad. I still top out at 23 activations, and I'm already playing Luke, RC and Obi Ghost, so there's not much of a loss to my squad to play it. In most games my opponent won't give me a great Levitation option in Round 1, so I figured I could better use that Levitation to get 3P0 into play (since Luke saving his Force Point rarely makes a difference one way or the other, since he has Renewal and starts with 4). This gives me a second Disruption field, as well as the Draw Fire/Evade combo, both of which came into play a few times. Since he's only 5 points, if he gets Draw Fire on a single attack that was meant for one of my squishy attackers, in my mind he's worth it, even if he doesn't survive the shot (and if he Evade's it, even better!).

Anyway, round 1 I played against a squad with Grand Master Yoda, Dash RS, Rex, Zuckuss, Lobot CLO, Mas, and fodder. I bring an R7 and Gamorrean BG with Lobot. The very first initiative of the game my opponent rolls an 11 and brings in Jarael and 2 Mouse Droids. I win the map roll and choose my map (Throne Room), and he sets up on the left side, giving me the right. Round 1 is just simple positioning, and he does well preventing me from getting a good shot, so I levitate 3P0 into the big room. Round 2 I have control of all 3 important doors and am able to Levitate an ERC up to kill his R2-AD, who was adjacent to Yoda (didn't want him getting that tow-and-throw off!). I lose the ERC to Rex, but that gives me a shot on Rex, so Han + Leia = Dead Rex. He advances some more to get behind the wall on the left side of gambit, including getting Yoda LoS into the room. Next Round he manages a Lightsaber Throw on Han, 3P0, an ERC, and my Gamorrean BG, but 3P0 uses Draw Fire to prevent it from hitting the ERC. Han and the Gamorrean both take 20, 3P0 Evades his. My opponent then brings Zuckuss out to shoot at Han, but 3P0 uses Draw Fire on that one, too, and gets hit, failing the evade, but I pass the damage to the BG. Han shoots back, as does Leia, so now Zuckuss is down. Next round I move Luke up to attack un-activated Yoda, and get a hit and a crit for 100 total damage. Then he moves Jarael in, but Han bases her and gets a Leia shot to take her out. Luke then goes out like a punk due to Dash hitting a number of shots and enough getting through that Yoda kills him with the Double Attack, and I fail the first Djem So, get the second save, miss the attack, and he cancels the FPRR, so I don't get anything from the Djem Sos and Luke dies. At this point I expect the 50 HP Yoda to be relatively easy to take with the rest of my squad (I knew I didn't have to worry about killing Dash since I got the points for Jarael and I had a few rounds of Gambit already), but that turned out to not be so. My ERC missed a number of attacks (with cunning!) and even Han whiffed more times than expected after landing 40 on him. FINALLY he failed a Lightsaber Defense save to die, allowing me to break 200 points for the win. A much closer game than I expected it to be after the first few rounds to be honest, but I was focused on killing Yoda (knowing the 55 points would let me break 200) and that little guy just wouldn't die, so Yoda and Dash slowly yet surely got my squad into a hurting position.

2nd Round I played against Jason, who was playing a Rebel squad similar to mine but with the Snowspeeder and Juno instead of Luke RC, Obi Ghost, and my second ERC. We both brought in 10 Mouse Droids, but I still outactivated him by 1. He won map and picked Ravaged Base, I took the outside. Round 1 was positioning and Door Locking, and we got all 3 of the important middle doors locked, creating somewhat of a stalemate situation. He did get Gambit with the Snowspeeder, and I elected to Levitate 3P0 into the Commander's Office instead of Gha Nachkt to get Gambit. Round 2 no one was willing to open the doors (because doing so meant letting your opponent get potentially deadly shots) for a little while, until finally at the end of the round when we both had just an ERC and Han left I activated both, moved the ERC to open the north door of the Commander's Office by standing adjacent to it and the door to the north east of that with Override, then moved my Han out to take a shot at his Lobot then mobile back in. Unfortunately Lobot made the Evade save, and his ERC closed the door back (his Han wasn't in position to do anything). Next round he got Lobot out of there. I was able to later get a pair of shots on Lobot with my other ERC, but missed the first one so he only took 10 damage, and I lost my ERC for it (bad move on my part, but I wanted to do something). I got a Grenades 10 with my other ERC on 2 of his Mice, both of them dying, which was important because it let me keep the activation lead. I was also able to give Leia's shot to Han to hit his ERC, who failed the Evade. Next round he moved his Juno up to keep Han from having Evade, but I moved a Mouse Droid next to the position that he was going to place the Snowspeeder in, so he wouldn't be able to get all 4 shots on Han. Before that, though, I moved Han adjacent to Juno and needed a 2 to kill her, take the lead, and be in good position for him to not be able to kill anything of mine. I rolled the unfortunate 1 though, and she lived. His Snowspeeder moved up, killed the Mouse, got a shot with Leia to put 50 damage on Han. I moved Luke RC adjacent to the speeder and got 40 damage on him. My living ERC and Leia took a bunch of shots needing 17s or trying to finish off the Speeder, but only 1 of his 4 got through and it lived. Jason wins by 5 points (that first round of Gambit!).

We go to lunch, and afterwards I'm playing Graham. I really think I've got this game, because as I see it my squad has the definite advantage in this match, but that confidence was more than a little of my undoing. I won't go into all the details of the game, but I really didn't take Grand Moff Tarkin or Pellaeon into account, and he used them both very well (especially that darn Tarkin). He got a great Blaster Barrage on me that I really should have been smart enough to keep from happening, and then he met every bad move of mine with a great move of his own (getting that 1 on Lobot didn't help, either). Worst game I've played in a long, long time, and he took advantage of every little thing I did wrong. I'm just glad the loss helped one of the Atlanta guys, so although I wasn't getting to the top 4, at least I helped him get his spot there.

Last game was pretty straightforward. My opponent was playing GG DAC, a T1 Bulk Loader, an HK-50, an ASN Assasin Droid, a Geonosian Overseer, 2 Geonosian Soldiers, a BDO, and a couple scrubs. I won map and picked Throne Room and he set up on the left. I out-activated him handily (even after bringing the R7 and Gamorrean BG with Lobot), so I just waited until he was all done, and Han got his double tap on some guy. I also got good use out of Ion Gun on my ERCs, of course. It was just a poor matchup for him, I had a lot of firepower and a lot more door control, plus the activations to do it all from the safety of the end of the round.

It was a fun day overall, despite my losses. I was quite happy to see both Greg and Graham in the final game. Over the day, Team Atlanta went 9-1 in games that didn't involve us playing ourselves, with that lone loss being me to Jason, so definitely a net win. We also finally managed to get Greg to drive some on one of these trips instead of just sleeping in the back, but about 20 minutes after that he gets a speeding ticket in Kentucky, just to add insult to his injury. But that just means he'll be coming back with a vengeance in Charlotte next weekend.

_________________"An elegant, easy-to-understand concept or mechanic that accomplishes 95% of what you want is much better than a clunky, obtuse mechanic that gets you 100%" - Rob Daviau

Hey I just wanted to let everyone who played in KY know that we will be having a Tennessee regional June 25th, I started a thread for it, but it was suggested to me that I post here as well and let everyone who played in KY know about it. I hope to see a lot of you guys, I'm supplying Pizza for the tournament, and drinks.

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